Sep 11 Good morning, RVA: Gun violence, City Council, and spaghetti

Good morning, RVA! It's 57 °F, and today should be a bit warmer than yesterday with highs in the mid 70s. Rain moves in tomorrow, so enjoy today!

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting two separate shootings that left four people dead in Gilpin Court. From the press release:

At approximately 4:26 a.m., RPD officers were called to the 1200 block of St. Paul’s Street for a report of random gunfire. When they arrived, they were directed to an apartment where they discovered the bodies of three adults. They had all apparently been shot.

At approximately 5:40 a.m. RPD officers at the scene of the St. Paul’s Street shooting incident heard the sound of gunfire nearby. They responded and discovered the body of an adult male lying on the ground outside an apartment building in the 100 block of Federal Street. He had apparently been shot.

Police have not developed any information to directly connect these two events.

Tonight, City Council returns from its summer-long slumber. You can find the agenda here (PDF). Lots of administrata, but they will consider appointing Amarilis M. Hernandez, the current deputy city auditor, as the interim city auditor.

This morning's longread

My mom shared this longread with me from the New Yorker and it’s really fascinating. The excerpt is intense, but there’s also a bunch of day-in-the-life-of-a-North Korean stuff, too.

A few days after the July 4th missile test, Pak told me that I could book a flight to Pyongyang. I submitted a list of people I wanted to interview, including diplomats and Kim Jong Un himself. About the latter, Pak only laughed. (Kim has never given an interview.) After Pak stopped laughing, he said I could talk to other officials. I wanted to understand how North Koreans think about the kind of violence that their country so often threatens. Were the threats serious, or mere posturing? How did they imagine that a war would unfold? Before my arrival in North Korea, I spent time in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing; many people in those places, it turned out, are asking the same things about the United States.